


Fracture

by deathwailart



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Miscarriage, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-20
Updated: 2011-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-22 21:23:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart





	Fracture

After Cottle discharges her, she cannot settle. Hormones, he says but she thinks it is something else that has her unable to sleep, instead roaming the halls of Galactica, fingers outstretched to touch walls that have no datastreams, hallways that are distinct, not one iota like the halls of the basestars. Touching the wall stops her from wrapping her arms around her empty middle. She sometimes catches herself looking for the child she saw in her mind’s eye, an improbably blonde thing, her beautiful Cylon baby. Little Liam. Oh God she wanted him with all her heart and whatever soul she possesses.

She can’t project anymore. Lost in the recesses of her own mind and all she has dredged up are murky vague visions of forests after a fire has swept through them, ravaging them. No lush green, no chirrups of birds. Just fire and ash and black and grey. Just like the aftermath of the Fall of the Colonies. When her belly had still held the perfection of her child she had tried to imagine a life for him and her but it had been so discordant. A life on worlds that no longer existed. All thanks to her. A mistake she can never atone for. Perhaps the loss of her son is God punishing her.

Three was right. She’s a broken machine.

This night she is not alone in the halls, the measured clang of footsteps and where once she would have straightened her spine, this time she feels herself begin to curl inward. The footsteps are approaching and she keeps her head down until they stop and she looks up. She knows this face. Kara Thrace, Starbuck, the one Leoben obsessed over, the one he would talk of non-stop and who he held for so long.

Kara looks as damaged as Six feels.

Kara looks her up and down, assessing. Six does likewise. They’re so equally fractured but Kara holds herself together. Holds herself up at any rate.

“Frak,” Kara says and Six doesn’t know if she’s meant to respond or if Kara meant the curse towards her but then the woman is motioning for Six to follow her. And she does because she has nowhere else to go. She doesn’t fit in this skin and she wonders why her parents made her this way. All she can do is _feel_. Feel and hurt and grieve. No joy in her. Kara leads them to the bunks, all the other pilots gone and Six wonders how many have called this room home, how many have their pictures lining the walls of the memorial hallway and how many more and listlessly wandering this dying derelict.

A bottle is set down along with two glasses and Six is sure Cottle has advised her against this but when alcohol is poured into her glass, she drinks automatically. They sit in silence and something she can’t put a name to rolls off Kara in great, ugly waves, some tidal wave threatening to swallow her.

Earth was meant to be their salvation. Instead it merely served to demoralise them all.

Eventually when close to half the bottle is gone without a word passing between them, she makes a move to leave and then Kara is up, one her feet, moving and Six braces for a blow but instead there’s a mouth on hers, insistent press of hips and she goes with it. Presses back, hands on the holster for Kara’s sidearm. She switches her mind off and instead lets Kara direct her, push her down into a bunk. Pictures line the wall. Smiling faces, Caprica before the fall, the Galactica in the early days. Kara and Sam. Sam...she remembers seeing him. Remembers that brave man with the proof she needed around his neck.

Above her Kara peels off tank tops and her bra and gets to work on the holster. Six slips out of the loose clothing that had been purely for comfort not so long ago but now the clothes hide her, hide this foreign body. It’s the first time she’s displayed this new landscape to anyone other than Cottle and even then she was still in her medical gown. Here she is as naked as when she awoke in the rebirthing tank. Her body hasn’t recovered yet, all these strange silver and purple lines crawling across her belly and breasts. Kara has none but there is a scar low on her abdomen beneath another scar and when Six touches it, Kara freezes in the act of pushing down her BDUs. Six knows about the farms now and they still horrify her. That wasn’t how God wanted them to be fruitful, by forcing men and women to procreate.

She knows now that love matters.

Kara finishes undressing, unlacing her boots and Six shimmies out of the last of her clothes, dropping them to the floor before Kara stretches out on top of her, warm and solid and electricity courses through her. Kara seems less vulnerable like this, less like a ghost of what she was – what Leoben said she was – and more like one of the Gods the Colonials worship. Kara kisses her again, hands exploring, fingers stroking over Six’s breasts, still heavy and aching and then her mouth follows, licking and sucking and Six wants to weep but instead she closes her eyes, gasping and keening softly, clutching Kara where she can. Kara travels down but she avoids where Six still isn’t firm, the one place she wants no one to touch. She’s grateful. And then Kara’s mouth is between her legs, all lips and tongue, hot and insistent, fingers gentle and Six lets herself drift, forgets about Baltar and Saul and Liam and she’s on a beach, waves crashing and she’s just feeling but for once she’s feeling joy and bliss, lights bursting behind her eyes as she comes, trembling all over.

When she finally opens her eyes, Kara is smirking down at her and Six knows the power there is in sex, that absurd pride when you can look down at someone flushed and panting with the knowledge that it was you who reduced them to such a state. Six wants to say something or reciprocate but Kara’s kneeling up, hands busy between her legs, head thrown back as she bucks and twists into her own touch. Six touches one of Kara’s wrists, feeling the shift of tendons beneath skin. Kara locks eyes with her and pulls the hand forward eventually to join both of hers. Kara comes quickly with the quiet gasp of someone used to touching themselves in a room full of people all trying to sleep. Kara slumps forward when she’s done and with careful rearranging they can both lie side by side, naked, sheen of sweat painting them.

She’s surprised when Kara curls closer, head on her shoulder but some reflex has Six pulling her close, all these hormones mixing with her confusion and everything else that’s been plaguing her since she woke, panicking, all those months and miles away. Maybe it started before, back when she was the nameless woman seducing Gaius. When she fell in love without knowing exactly what it was.

There are tears on her shoulder now and on her face. Broken everything between the pair of them now, lying here in a bed that’s starting to smell like despair and looking for strength and power where they can. She looks at the woman lying next to her and Kara looks back and together they reach for their clothes saying nothing although she thinks this encounter was several conversations at once without either of them breathing a word. Kara heads to the sickbay once they’re out the door where she will lie next to Sam. Six goes to the memorial hall where she ends up in front of the group of pilots.

Kara looks back at her. It explains a lot, she thinks. She touches the photo and sees the Kara Leoben loves so obsessively; that woman is long gone, replaced with jagged edges and empty gaping spaces. This time as she returns to her room, Six makes herself walk tall, walk straight, walk to her destiny with purposeful strides.

Better to focus on the breaks than the holes.


End file.
